Modern legal education presumes law’s utility but questions its vision. However, law’s intrinsic purpose has long animated jurisprudential enquiry; jurisprudence being the cornerstone of orthodox legal education, the course tasked with probing law’s nature, rationale, and aspirations. Within this traditional pedagogical framework, natural law theory occupied a central place, offering a paradigm through which students could explore how law, though distinct from morality, is inseparably entwined with the pursuit of justice. 1 Yet in recent years, jurisprudence has taken a back seat in the legal curriculum as law’s vision becomes less clear. Law’s purpose either conceived as a necessary measure for social coordination, or simply as a matter of source seem now to be the only available conclusions. This article argues that these conclusions are both premature and unsatisfactory. We proceed on this basis (without casting aspersions on any group or individual) to observe that there has been a general movement away from such philosophical enquiries in modern Western legal systems and that this pedagogical turn coincides with the growing integration of law into other interdisciplinary domains. 2 This approach to legal education values law, not for its unique nature, but its usefulness. We enter the conversation at this juncture, not simply to lament these developments, but to argue for the conceptual necessity of the natural law outlook for any cogent attempt at legal education.
Lee et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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